mundane » Monday

Just one of those things… even if you’ve gone over the list hundreds of times you’re bound to miss some small Monday detail. (Good-Tutorials.com, blog entry, September 26th, 2005)

I submit that Microsoft always tries their best to make things better, but overlooks some Monday detail that ends up shooting them in the foot. (Slashdot, comment, July 26, 2005)

Later I found out it was a stupid Monday detail that messed my stuff up; I had typed in newline instead of newLine. (gr0m3r.com, Oct 28, 2004)

I woke up to a world where the size of an enemy is described in microns and the depth of his hatred in religious beliefs.
I went in to the Monday world of cheery platitudes, and heard, after shaking my head over the demise of the A’s, what is inexplicably known in these parts as “the Charlie story”. (American Politics Journal, Oct 19, 2001)

In texts aimed at Christians of some denominations, the punning juxtaposition of one’s (presumably godly and wholesome) Sunday life with the harsher “Monday world” appears to be somewhat of a cliché. The book title _Choosing Rest: Cultivating a Sunday Heart in a Monday World_ (link) is certainly a pun rather than an eggcorn. But some of the following examples might not be, or at least might be construed as the the standard metaphor by some of their readers:

* “What does it profit a person to worship God for one hour in a church on Sunday,” laments William Diehl, “but be unable to experience God’s presence in the Monday world?” (Worshipping God in the Everyday Spaces of Life, 2000)
* What are “God’s things?” Are they spiritual rather than material? Are they religious rather than secular? Do they belong to the Sunday world rather than the Monday world? (Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church, October 16, 2005)
* There was a preacher in our town
whose Sunday text was the Prince of Peace,
but
when he looked out at the Monday world– at the uppity
blacks and pushy Jews
and sassy wives and sneaky heathen–blood
scalded his face as purple as if
he’d hung by his heels….
(excerpt from a poem by Philip Appleman, quoted on NJPoets.com)

Rob Leachman comments “Mondays can be rough, so watch out!” And indeed in German, the image of Monday being a particularly difficult day of the work week is reflected in the noun _Montagswagen_, literally “Monday car”. It refers to a car that even though bought brand new, quickly exhibits some defects and faults: a lemon or a dud, in English. The idea behind this is that it must have been built on a Monday, when the workers were supposedly less attentive to detail.

Commentaries

Citations that contrast Sunday’s behavior with Monday’s are surely not eggcorns, but I question whether “Monday” is intended as a pun, rather than a mere rhyme. The notion, by the way, is at least a century old, as in the old Bert Williams song (by Billy Murray):

He goes to church on Sunday
And passes ’round the contribution box.
But meet him in the office on a Monday:
He’s as crooked and as cunning as a fox.
On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
He’s robbing everybody that he can…
But he goes to church on Sunday,
So they say that he’s an honest man.

That’s why those aren’t up in the examples, but quoted in the explanatory text below. Where I acknowledge that the “Sunday world”/”Monday world” contrast in sermons and other Christian writing is certainly not an eggcorn in most cases. But what the listeners and readers make of it is an entirely different matter.

I would actually expect the target audiences to get the “Sunday/Monday” connection before the “mundane world” connection. Your average parishioner is more used to making associations with “Sunday” than to hearing the term “mundane”. “Monday world” is, as mentioned, something of a cliché.